


We Who Sought

by brutumfulmen



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), Established Relationship, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 14:41:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30073806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutumfulmen/pseuds/brutumfulmen
Summary: What else is there to discover after over six thousand years at one another's side? A rather important aspect Crowley's been avoiding, it seemed.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 137





	We Who Sought

**Author's Note:**

> ‘True forms’ prompt an anon requested for me reaching 200K words posted on Ao3. Hope you enjoy!

Aziraphale brought the matter up in his usual peculiar way one mild evening in the centre of Saint James’s Park, as the sunlight dipped low enough to bleed orange and pink across the rim of the world. Their usual bench for feeding the ducks was occupied by a young couple and their children, so Crowley and Aziraphale stood closer to the slow moving river. Crowley was rummaging through the feed bag for the perfect kernel while Aziraphale leaned against Crowley, a soft breath right before spoke reached Crowley’s ears.

“Have you looked recently?”

Successful at last, Crowley raised up a single kernel of corn and took aim at the impatiently waiting duck. With a precise flick he launched it and watched as the kernel landed perfectly between the duck’s eyes and bounced away before the duck snapped up to catch it. Another duck looked on with clear jealousy, his next target.

“At my portfolio?” Crowley asked and reached into the bag for another piece, determined to hit the other duck and cause a fight. “‘Course I have, bloody market’s in shambles right now with the whole—”

“No my dear,” Aziraphale interjected, raising his head from its place on Crowley’s arm to look off towards the sunset. A rare occurrence upon the crowded, grey skyline of London but neither were keen on questioning it. “At, well, at yourself I suppose. If you catch my meaning.”

There were several ways for Crowley to take that, some incredibly vulgar, but with the sun so low and Aziraphale sounding thoughtful as opposed to casual, Crowley decided on the most likely interpretation of the question. They had less of these sorts of conversations now that Aziraphale could pounce on a post-coital, nearly asleep Crowley for an audience to whatever thoughts he had. Yet when they came up like this, all side steps and half measures, it required him to be patient with the angel, despite how uncomfortable it might get.

“Give the ol’ thing a check-up? Make sure the necessary bits are still there?”

A hum came from Aziraphale more thoughtful than disapproving, Crowley knew the difference uncannily well, before his plump hand reached into the bag and tossed a kernel at a lone duck eyeing the others mournfully. Ever a soft creature. “More along the lines of re-discovering? Would that be the right word? Personally, it has been a terribly long time since I looked given my assignment to Earth never called for it, so I wondered after you. That’s all.”

Typical evasive angel. It definitely was not idle curiosity that brought this on. Crowley shrugged, and dumped the bag of feed into the river if only to see the swarm of ducks go wild, quacking and wings flapping water everywhere. Other park-goers around them retreated back in annoyance over the commotion, but he knew Aziraphale would not complain about a bit of privacy.

“Don’t need to. Already know what all I’m like.” He glanced down at Aziraphale when the angel made a curious noise. Aziraphale seemed surprised, the blink he gave Crowley as his mouth didn’t quite catch up with the invisible wheels turning in his head.

“You do?”

“Yep,” Crowley let the word pop from his lips. “Handsome, devilishly so, you could say.”

Aziraphale leaned back, the furrow of his brow and widening of his eyes the pinnacle of angelic offence. “I certainly shall not!”

When his snickering faded and Aziraphale’s ruffled feathers smoothed back down a quiet lull fell between them. One Crowley knew he was expected to resolve, his angel clearly at the limits to his ability to coax information out of Crowley. 

“So, what do you look like then, angel?”

“For angels, well, those within the third sphere of the Heavenly host tend to take after our earthly form, as we are the ones ordered to walk among humankind.” Aziraphale replied a touch earnestly, no doubt relieved by Crowley’s willingness to discuss the matter. “If you were expecting a show of flaming eyes or a myriad of faces I am afraid the Cherubim would be your best bet.”

Crowley snorted rudely. “Those buggers got too many heads and not a mind in any of ‘em. No thanks.” The angel laughed quietly, no longer ashamed to find such things Crowley said humourous, as if any second he’d be struck down or snatched up. Crowley pressed a kiss to Aziraphale’s temple in response, then another down on his cheek. “I’m on with the face you have got, anyways.”

“Well thank you, considering it’s the only one I intend to have. As for you, I have come close to your true self before,” Aziraphale continued, a shyness to his voice now, his fingers along the hem of his waistcoat instead of entwined with Crowley’s the way they should be. That would not do. “Your scales and claws surface whenever we are, well.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, impossibly fond, as Aziraphale’s cheeks pinkened. Of all the times to be embarrassed he chose now.

“Not exactly. It’s different for demons,” Crowley said, buying himself some time for his next words. He took a look around to see most of the park deserted and brought an arm over the angel’s shoulders for a quick stroll towards the Bentley. “You’ve seen the matchup of my human and snake bodies, where out come the claws and scales. Forked tongue is default, as it were.”

“That is, not quite all I have seen,” Aziraphale stopped before the Bentley, worried his bottom lip between his teeth. Blue eyes flicked between Crowley’s stare, as though unsure how to say the next part. The main reason he started this entire conversation. “Sometimes, in your shadow, I see the outlines of flames.”

Crowley winced.

“Right,” he mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck as he unlocked the passenger door and gestured for the angel to enter. “Sorry about that.”

No, he was not ashamed. He rarely felt the need to deny the more sinister aspects comprising what he emerged from the great sulphuric pits of Hell as. But there were parts of him that could frighten Aziraphale, that warred over every touch he placed on Aziraphale, whether to sink claws in and leave their mark or push him away, protect him from the overbearing reality that was a corrupted, fallen seraph.

“No, no I do not want you to apologise. Rather, oh,” Aziraphale’s hands wrung in distress. Accompanied by his still prominent blush Crowley now understood what the angel had hoped for, and had been made to worry that he was stumbling towards rejection. Crowley stepped forward to encircle his fretful angel within his arms in an effort to soothe what he caused between them, taking in the angel’s sigh of relief at being rescued. For a moment the dull roar of London faded away as he held Aziraphale, before he let out the heavy weight of his breath.

“Fine. But you can’t run screaming.” Crowley grinned down at Aziraphale, thankful the tight pinch around the corners of his eyes remained behind his sunglasses. Instead of smiling back, Aziraphale leaned his head against Crowley’s hard chest, his gentle embrace around Crowley’s waist tightened, then relaxed.

“Of course not, my dear.”

Later that evening, after a quiet drive followed by the slow lift ride up to their flat, Crowley took Aziraphale’s hands in his own larger ones and kissed his lips. He then leaned down, pressed kiss after kiss to the thin, fine-lined skin of the angel’s knuckles as if in a plea, for what he did not know, and led him to their bedroom. There, amidst a sanctuary built together, Crowley closed the curtains and undressed Aziraphale slowly until he wore nothing but the comforting dark of night. Crowley nudged, Aziraphale fell, and Crowley went with him.

Crowley’s narrow hips wedged between the plush expanse of pale sturdy thighs, Aziraphale’s knees folding into the crooks of his elbows as large, calloused hands wandered and worshipped all the parts Aziraphale never showed anyone but him. Aziraphale sighed when Crowley moved on from teasing the angel’s twitching prick and cupped the sensitive weight of his balls, panted into Crowley’s ear when his fingertips brushed against the tightly closed furl of Aziraphale’s body. In reply his hands touched to the delicate skin over Crowley’s ribs, brushed through the fine red hairs along his broad chest. Impatient for once, Aziraphale ground down hard and quick onto Crowley’s miraculously slick fingers as they slipped into him, breathed his encouragement and pleas against Crowley’s sharp mouth.

”Dear, please,” Aziraphale asked, and how could Crowley betray such trust in that plea? He settled further between Aziraphale’s hiked, folded legs, and kissed him deeply as he began to push forward.

Aziraphale gripped tight into Crowley’s hard shoulders when he finally penetrated him upon a mutual sigh of relief. A broken moan from the angel’s throat spurred him deeper, a desperate throb of his cock in response to the restless legs locked around him, demanding more.

“Flawless angel,” he murmured, grinned at the obligatory huff from his blasphemy alongside the full-body shiver running through Aziraphale’s plush skin. They made love regularly, but he found each time better than the last, and the first time had been perfect. Explain that one.

“Beloved demon,” Aziraphale whispered, the words hitched with every little bit Crowley sunk deeper. Crowley brushed his mouth along Aziraphale’s, inhaled the angel’s sigh as his body fought to relax around Crowley’s cock. A hint of angelic strength lived there in the bite of Aziraphale’s blunt fingernails, and it would be impressive had Crowley not been serpentine down to the marrow, all tough skin and coiling muscle. He tried so hard to provide them an even playing field, to ensure Aziraphale never feared after his own safety. Being a demon already had to be pushing the issue for so gentle a creature as Aziraphale who tried to see the good in everyone—

A shaking hand came to his face, brushed away his darkening thoughts as those fingers along his sharp cheek gently flipped his skin to scales.

“Crowley, please show me.” Before Crowley could reply, Aziraphale’s skin, flushed with nervous energy and so imperfectly mortal, blurred along with the bedroom around them as he turned into pure, shimmering light.

Out from the top of Aziraphale’s head emerged a rotating crown, his halo in its Heavenly glory, the golden perfection embedded with gems of topaz and sapphire, folded and braided into the shape of spiralling vines and what Crowley swore might be apple trees. Two large wings burst from Aziraphale’s back, feathered kaleidoscopes of colour that fluttered and wafted stellar dust around him. Where his spine would be was instead a gilded sceptre of more topazes and sapphires to keep him upright, and at the base of his neck gleamed a massive gem of pure white, the centre of his being. Before him the protector of human civilisation, a true principality Aziraphale appeared, dotted as he was by human sweat and holding on with trembling, ever fretful hands. Despite being larger than the Earth itself Aziraphale was so small, floating there before Crowley as their human bodies remained connected, moving together.

He was everything Crowley never believed would be his to adore, and how he loved him.

Crowley thrust deeper into Aziraphale, serpentine scales trickled from his feet up to his neck. Mortal and serpent flesh fought against their disintegration in a vain attempt to keep him underwraps, shield the angel he loved from what he never could deny. There was no way he could reveal his truth without it frightening Aziraphale. No fucking way.

“Aziraphale,” he grunted in effort to restrain himself, one last chance. “Are you sure?”

“Please,” Aziraphale called out to Crowley through the universe and the warm air between them, made his ears ring like wedding bells. “I’m yours, no matter what.”

He’s never been braver than when Aziraphale needed him, and this was no different. So with a deep breath Crowley threw back the bolt within his chest and felt his skin unstitch layer upon layer, hewn apart before the vacuum of this private section of space made within their bedroom. The red fin of his styled hair, every self-imposed confine burned away from the heat of his own self to leave this form dappled like the night sky. Twilight-tinged limbs, shattered at every joint unfolded and left him towering over Aziraphale, spinning wheels of a thousand yellow eyes remained where his head had been sheared off by Heaven’s holy guillotine. The unhealed wound of his neck bubbled with ichor and morphed upwards into a flay of cross pein hammers, into a tri-faced stallion, into a hissing, wrathful serpent before retreating back to the confines of his throat. Six wings spanning wider than a solar system burst out from his back, shimmering as they beat clouds of burning ash, each charred feather smouldering bright orange and deep red around the edges.

Seraphim, the burning ones, but no one ever said how they burned, how Crowley in particular did. A hand reached up to his chest, unhinged the grated door of his interstellar furnace to reveal where the molten heat of his star-forging, corrupted halo resided. Somewhere past the expanse of himself Crowley heard Aziraphale gasp and he slammed the door shut, its rattle felt through every rung of his being.

“Aziraphale,” his voice boomed from his chest even as his mortal mouth whispered at the shell of Aziraphale’s ear. Lightyears away the nearest stars, his creations, shuddered, reversed on their axis. He called out for Aziraphale with the same voice he roared the galaxies into spinning long before this angel knew of existence from the Will of God. “Angel are you—”

_Afraid?_

“Crowley, oh my dear you’re magnificent.” Aziraphale sounded close to tears, the soft, yellow sunlight of his true angelic body glowed as if in joy, a neighbour to his human form in its simplistic wonder. How can he call Crowley magnificent when he was comprised of such beauty?

Aziraphale’s hands, so much smaller than his own, reached for Crowley’s and did not pull away when they were engulfed by shattered, space-frozen fingers. “Why have you hidden this part of you away for so long?” Even now he sounded like himself, that high, gentle voice of his Crowley considered his favourite song above all. Crowley shook his red-haired head and it made his wheels of eyes groan and spiral, unable to answer that question. How easily Crowley forgot the age of his rust-marred hinges and ancient limbs in comparison to this beloved principality, formed for the very humans he’d been called to protect while Crowley instead remembered time before the stars existed. A time when there was no Aziraphale to illuminate the world.

No, he brushed the thought away, let it leave him as cosmic dust might be carried off by a storm. He refused to remember that now.

“Angel,” he repeated as he pulled Aziraphale close and pressed him down, so relieved and awestruck it made him ache and sent his halo spiralling bright within its furnace, his mortal heart racing. “My angel.”

“Yours,” Aziraphale whispered, there again the ring of wedding bells. “Kiss me, please.”

This form had no mouth with which to kiss Aziraphale, having lost what once sang endless praises of _‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come’_ as he hammered to life stars worthy of gracing Her night sky. But truth could be his offering to this principality, so he turned all one thousand eyes upon Aziraphale and felt the swell of heat within him as his voice roared to life.

“I look and see only you, ever since that first moment high upon Eden’s wall. From the smallest spark of fire in a miracled tea to your mortal imperfections from a life well-lived to the purity of your endless Grace. For six thousand years I have seen who you are and it’s beautiful, my fussy, incredible angel.” Aziraphale’s angelic form writhed underneath him as Crowley churned hot and solar bright, tried in vain to conjure up a flame capable of crafting a star worthy to bear Aziraphale’s name. He would, if only asked. “You are brighter than any star, a universe away I would find you, and I would come to you, unable to stop myself. Unwilling to resist.”

The forge’s door shuddered against his halo’s barely contained fury as hissing, eyeless snakes erupted from the ichor of his throat in a tangled mass. They slithered across Aziraphale’s holy form, forked tongues flicked out reaching for a holiness so long untouched, desperate to claim it as theirs. Crowley growled, fangs erupting as he thrust harder, legs having merged into the length of a tail, coiled heavy and cold on the bedroom floor. Somewhere a lamp shattered to pieces, a window cracked to its edges.

“Find you and claim you as mine and never let you go, tear those very stars apart for daring to compare. I'd gladly burn the Earth to ashes, slaughter more than God ever did. Bring down Heaven itself for your safety, your survival.” There it was, the wretched truth of Crowley’s love. An unquenchable need to crack Aziraphale open and drink from his glisten, a possessive loyalty he’d rend the universe to shreds to maintain.

He stared into his angel’s unflinching stare, watched the shifting white glow and blue human eyes, a strength unlike any other within them despite his words. Has he always known Crowley was this way? And through it all, Aziraphale had loved him, all he was and could be.

“I’d heal the sick, too.” Crowley’s ichored serpents faded like the long arcs of solar flares, his rapid wheels of eyes slowed. Crowley moved slower, pistoned into the tight rim of Aziraphale in deep strokes as his twilight arms wrapped around the sunlight of Aziraphale, cradled him within trembling wings. How small Aziraphale felt in his embrace, how fragile. He longed to pull Aziraphale’s glory to the heat of his furnace, show the angel it was not only destruction he was capable of, but warmth. “Dry up floods, regrow Eden itself, live a good life. I’d do anything for your happiness. For you.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale sobbed out, gripping Crowley with gleaming hands and soft fingertips, the crown spiraling over his head reflecting great beams of light. Glistening round pearls fell in long strings from the corners his eyes, and in both realms Crowley leaned forward to kiss his tears away, succeeding in only one. Let it be enough, let him be enough. “My Crowley, I love you too, I loved you from the beginning.”

Overwhelmed, determined to prove worthy, Crowley went to reply when suddenly his human voice moaned. A tightening coil in his lower spine reminded him what they were doing in the mortal realm, where they lived and loved. In his arms Aziraphale arched, his wings shivering free feathers as Crowley’s snapped and burned. Liquid hot pleasure bled from every shattered point of his body, and Aziraphale cried out in the language Crowley remembered within the part of him that would always know its Maker in Heaven, but belonged to that small, nervous angel he met on Earth.

He was tongue-tied in every form, but he loved this angel with his entire being and somehow Aziraphale heard everything he never knew how to speak aloud.

“My angel,” he groaned, hissed, roared, and there in both his twilight-tinged arms and pale mortal embrace Aziraphale fell apart from the unstoppable bliss of his climax. Another thrust, deep as he could and Crowley followed right after into dizzying pleasure, the world blurring, then folding around them.

They came to like one sifting through sand, in pieces shaken gently back down to reality. Around him Aziraphale’s body clenched warm and wet, his release smeared between them from the friction of their bodies, his kaleidoscope wings faded to their usual white, then back into the ether feather by feather as if reluctant to go. Hands journeyed up and down black-red scales, heels rest on the thick line of his twitching tail, the mass of it now curled on the floor at the base of their bed. Crowley shuddered occasionally as he pulsed his release inside Aziraphale, who only hummed in contentment each time, and for a long while nothing was said. Nothing needed to be.

Eventually his stiff arms came back to responsiveness, fingers twitching from their place at the sides of Aziraphale’s head. Something smelled like burning, and he hazard it to be his hair, if how Aziraphale patted it down with a hurried, flustered touch before letting his hand fall back onto the pillow, or what was left of it. Their bed was a mess of feathers both smouldering black and untouched white, and despite it all, there underneath the long line of Crowley’s body lay Aziraphale.

Where Crowley’s edges burned and flickered, Aziraphale’s shined, even through the dark.

A shy smile curved its way across Aziraphale’s mouth as Crowley stared at the angel, the persistent flush of his cheeks more captivating than any principality’s crown or ethereal glow. He ran the backs of his knuckles down Aziraphale’s cheek, smiled in return when he watched Aziraphale lean towards the touch. Reluctant, but now uncomfortably damp and sticky, Crowley shifted, and pulled his softening cock from Aziraphale, a warm rush of semen following to drip between them. Crowley kissed away the quiet gasp Aziraphale let out with no small degree of urgency, smoothing large hands down the legs still wrapped around his hips.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” Crowley rasped when his voice returned, each facet of who he was having settled back into the confines of his chest where a mortal heart continued to beat. “Whatever you feel now, just don’t make it that.”

Aziraphale’s hands came to cradle the shape of Crowley’s head, and pulled him down for a kiss.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered when they parted, and as Crowley reached for him he went willingly, continuing to speak. “Never have I felt safer than when I am with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
